The world of thrifting

I've stumbled across a handful of blogs totally devoted to thrifting or frugality. This post by some guy who writes in the mid-west is absolutely hysterical.

While he often writes about his love of thrifting and the cool things he finds, this post is about the things he doesn't like about thrift stores !

Top ten things I hate about thrift stores.

Lenten Potpourri

I was a Lenten failure by 12noon. Made it that long and then caved in to the sweet dark nectar of the Gods - diet coke. Therefore, I am amending my Lenten sacrifice to: Thou shalt have no more than one diet coke per day, partaking of said diet coke no earlier than 12 noon. I challenged my sister Sarah to a friendly little Lenten competition as she is also giving up soda. Over Facebook, no less. Her response ? "BRING IT." Such good Catholic girls are we.

Also, I recently had to occasion to try and explain to some old friends about our attempt to live simply. Part of the way the Quimby family lives simply is by limiting our activities and social engagements. This allows us more time at home with our family and a more peaceful and calm life. I seem to kind of bungle it when trying to explain it to people who may have never heard of that concept before. Awwwwwwwwwwwkward.

In other matters, had a great day with my girls at an open gym at a gymnastics center. After the class, the children line up to get hand sanitizer and a stamp on their hands. Ramona got lost in the shuffle and Beezus leaned down to her and said, "Do you want a stamp, too, Ramona? Yes ? Okay, come over here with me." Beezus led her over to the end of the line, then went up to the "teacher" at the front of the line and said, "Excuse me, my little sister is waiting over her for a stamp."

What an incredible, amazing difference a year can make. Children are so, so awesome.

Lent 2010

So, I've been reading all these Catholic moms blogs about how to teach the meaning of Lent to your children. These women are some amazing writers and the way they seem to reasonably live their faith is pretty cool.

But you know what ? I'm kind of tapped out right now. I feel like everything is on a good track, I'm managing my time and our family time really well. Our family is in a good spot. We like it here, in this good spot. While I will talk to Beezus about Lent, I'm not sure that a 4 year old will get the symbolism behind doing an extra good thing during Lent. We already talk about how it makes God happy when you do something nice for somebody else. (I should add here that I am also careful to emphasize every time that it can also make your own heart feel happy and that you don't have to let the other person have their way every single time. I don't want her to grow up thinking that she has to do stuff all the time to make other people happy. Um, hello 1-800-counseling ?!?!)

So, I'm thinking about my own Lent stuff. I need to make some more sacrifices. The thought popped into my head today to give up soda for lent. It's pretty old school to give something up, but that's what I think I can manage this year. To be honest, diet coke has been tasting kind of funny in my mouth lately, and I think it's become more of a habit than something that I really enjoy.

In terms of my doing something extra, I'm going to try and really find some good Catholic moms blogs out there for some spiritual enrichment. I get such nourishment and enrichment from my current blogroll on mothering and simple living and crafting, I'm sure that I would be similarly enriched from blogs with a spiritual focus.

I also need to be compacting more seriously. While I'm certainly not at the mall buying clothes for myself or at Williams Sonoma buying new home accessories, I've been slipping up a bit at the thrift store. I gave myself a personal challenge in February to see just how little I could spend on discretionary items and eating out. I've been okay on discretionary items but we've still been eating out too much - and by eating I out I usually mean me going through a drive through (god, that is SERIOUSLY embarassing to admit - I'm actually picturing several of my friends reactions right now). I have a small list of things I need to buy (Easter dress for Beezus, underpants for Beezus, Mr. Q really needs some new ties, electric razor for me).

Compacting and living simply really do tie in with Lent in more than just the "giving something up way." I would really like to be even less prideful about material things and more humble in general - compacting almost forces me to do that. It's easier to not be prideful when your favorite dress shoes for work are 8 years old !

Honestly, where's a good Jewish girl when you need one to help you figure out your Lenten resolutions ?!?!?!

Drinking Games

I think that the girls and I haven't been consuming enough water the past week during the storm.

They are sitting on the couch watching their mid-morning DVD (this is the last day of that habit) and I told them that every time Clifford talks they have to take a sip of their water.

Who would have thought that I would be teaching drinking games to a 2 and 4 year old !!!

All good things

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

I felt really sad packing the girls lunches last night. I hated dropping them off at school today. I almost felt like crying when we were driving Mr. Q to the metro (he would be risking his life to walk - thanks a lot asshats that don't clear your sidewalks) and I remarked that with a few exceptions I've really enjoyed our time together this week. Those exceptions would be Saturday when I was in a house cleaning frenzy due to extreme worry and anxiety over losing water or power; Monday when I had a lot of work to do from home; and one other time that I can't remember.

We relaxed the rules and our days took on a new, albeit predictable, routine. We would sleep until the girls would wake up around 7-7:45, cereal for breakfast and then a pre-school appropriate DVD (Dora, Clifford, Sesame Street, Curious George) for about an hour (I KNOW - WE WENT CRAZY). During that hour, I would get dressed and clean up the kitchen and possibly start some laundry. Mr. Q would, of course, start shoveling. After tv time we would play either upstairs, or we would put on slippers, a lightweight fleece jacket, and a hat and go play in the basement. After that it would be some outside time if possible, lunch, usually some extended book reading or playtime and then nap. Mr. Q would sometimes come in from shoveling for the marathon book reading session, but sometimes there was so much to do outside that he didn't come in until after the girls were down.

During naptime, Mr. Q and I would sit on the couch and eat lunch together and then watch tv or an episode of Band of Brothers. The girls would wake up, playtime in the basement or outside, dinner, the usual 20-30 minutes of a DVD, more playtime, and then bed. During active snowing, Mr. Q would go back outside right after dinner to do more shoveling.

We had family playtime and Mr. Q and I also got some 1:1 time with each kid. I did 6 loads of laundry and the vast majority of that is folded, and about half is put away.

My picture taking was sporadic and the computer is acting up, so I don't want to task it by trying to edit and post these photos.

But it was really very, very nice.

A Prayer

Dear God,

Thank you for this unexpected gift of time with my family. Thank you for a strong husband and a good snow shovel. Thank you for thrift stores and my slightly obsessive nature that have allowed me to stockpile extra toys. Thank you for Ramona going p00p in the potty, by herself, today and yesterday. Thank you for electricity, diet coke, and store brand fudge stripe cookies that were on sale.

Help me to be patient and kind with my children and husband. Help me to continue to look at this time as a gift. And most of all, God, please send a text to mother nature and ask her to ease up on the blizzard-y stuff.

Your faithful servant,
Thrift Store Mama

WAHMWKAH

The family has been having fun over the past few snow days. Except for today when I was working from home for 10 freaking hours. With the exception of an hour doing some baking for a bake sale that is assuredly not going to happen tomorrow, and a few breaks to help the little people go potty (or clean out p00p in big girl panties - aaarrrggghhh), and a couple breaks to take video of the toboggan run that Mr. Q and Beezus built, I was in front of the computer for the most of the day. I also did a couple little conference calls and lots of phone calls with colleagues and my boss.

Mr. Q was on kid and house duty all day long and thankfully Aunt Susan arrived for a few hours to help out. But whew !

You know, I've been all sorts of different moms in my brief 4.5 year tenure.
I've worked full time at a demanding job.
I've worked part-time at a demanding job.
I've been a full-time stay at home mom.
I've been a mostly full-time stay at home mom but also a very limited part-time working mom, teaching a class about 7 hours a week.

I'm currently a part-time working mom at a job that is not usually demanding. I usually work 3 days a week in an office (24 hours including commuting time) and a few hours at home, but that at home time is almost always when the girls are napping or at school.

Today was supposed to be a work day for me and I had a lot of work to do. I was a WAHMWKAH (work at home mom with kids at home)! And it was awful !!! I wanted to hurry up and get my work done so I didn't want the girls to interrupt me. But I hated not answering their questions or trying to hustle them on to an activity with Mr. Q. When they want me, I want to go to them. Even though Mr. Quimby was around for a good part of it, it was still awful.

I'm grateful that I don't have to be a WAHMWKAH every day !

How to potty train without pull-ups

I referenced in an earlier post about the system I have for washing out p00py big girl p@nties. I offered up a teaser, and one commenter fell for it !!! So now I have justification for sharing my system which I think is SOOOOO cool !!!

Lots of people just assume that you potty train kids using pull-ups. Pull-ups in this case include all types of disposable training pants. My calculations show that pull-ups cost between $ .35 and $ .50 per pull-up. In addition, because they are super-absorbent, they don't let the kids feel the wetness. I'm not opposed to all use of pull-ups. Beezus wears pull-ups at night. I'm just opposed to people not thinking about how to potty train without pull-ups.

I use padded washable underp@nts, which we call big girl p@nties. Ramona has some that are all cloth and some that are all cloth with a thin vinyl barrier on the outside. These are awesome.

Without further ado, here's my system:

First, I try to dump any loose p00pie into the toilet. I flush said loose p00pie. Then I dip the dirty parts of the big girl p@nties into the toilet and flush again while doing so. This gets off additional parts of loose p00pie. Repeat until only a little loose p00pie is left. Then I let the big girl p@nties soak in the potty for 5-10 minutes. I can usually keep the clean portion out of the toilet and dry.


Flush again, lift the p@nties out and with your other hand slip the colander to rest on the potty seat. Place wet p@nties in colander and let them drain for 10 minutes or so. Needless to say, I spray down this colander with lysol and am sure to keep it out of reach of the girls.

Transfer to washer - run through a rinse cycle. (Wash hands multiple times with hot water and soap - remove all p00pie germs !) At this point, I now feel comfortable washing the p@nties with a load of clothes. If I don't have a load ready to go, then I leave them in the washer. Sometimes I'll run two or three p@nties through a rinse cycle before I'm ready to do a full wash. After they're washed, we hang them from pants hangers over the tub in an upstairs bathroom - it's just too cold for them to dry well in the basement and I like to make sure that they are dry all the way through.

And that, my dear readers is how you use disposable training pants in place of pull-ups.

Happy 2nd Anniversary to Me !

Geez, I missed my own blogiversary. This is the date I consider to be the day I started my blog: February 4, 2008. I posted a couple times in December 2007, but didn't really make the commitment to blog until February.

My sister Susan once said to me (in that special way that only sisters can): "It's too bad that when you start something new that you can't do it in a reasonable way." What she meant was that when I start new things I throw myself into it full force: I can't just join a club, I have to volunteer to be a leader. I can't just start scrapbooking, I have to become a consultant that sells the products (that was back in 1998). I can't just give birth to kids and buy them regular clothes like everyone else - I have to shop at the thrift store and then try to find pieces from the same collection. I can't just breastfeed a baby - I have to learn everything about it, attend weekly meetings for the first 3 months, AND breastfeed for 16 months (the last 3 when I was already pregnant with her sister!)

For the most part, that's the way I started this blog: I jumped in full force. While I've waxed and waned over the past two years, it remains a pretty good chronicle of my life. Even if I stop tomorrow, my girls will have this snapshot, this oh so honest snapshot of what my life, and our lives, were like for this period of time.

I am really, really proud that I've kept this up.

Happy Blogiversary Mrs. Quimby.

Much love, Thrift Store Mama.

The Adventures of Ola-Baby

At least 2-3 times a week Beezus tells me something about Ola-Baby and I think "I've got to go write that down." Honestly, Ola-Baby could have a blog of her own with all of her adventures and the interesting things about her. With her supporting cast of Tammy, Big Baby, Big Sister, Little Sister, Adam and Abigail, the mermaid dolls, Adam and Alexander (yes, there are 2 Adams) and an assortment of 4 build-a-bears, Lamby, Rudolph and a couple un-named stuffed animals I suspect that there would be no shortage of blog posts.


The girls and Mr. Quimby and I talk about our extended doll/bear family as if they were real. It's not unusual for Mr. Quimby to relate a story about when Beezus or Ramona were babies and have Beezus respond with, "Oh yes, Daddy, Ola-Baby does that too." I know that Beezus knows we are pretending, but I think most people would see these interactions and assume we are talking about a real person.

But what Beezus said to me today, and the matter of fact way she said it was probably the best one so far.


One of her favorite night-time activities is to look at her friends' blogs, to see if there are any new pictures of them. She asks most often for pictures of Eamon or Isabella, but is happy to see her other friends too. A few days ago we were looking at Rachel's recent pictures and scrolled down to a post about Hanukkah.

Beezus: Oh, look a Menorah. Why does Rachel have a menorah?
Mrs. Q: Because her daddy is Jewish.
Beezus: Are we Jewish?
Mrs. Q: No, we are Christian.
Beezus: I want to be Jewish.
Mrs. Q: Well, if we were Jewish, we wouldn't go to our church with Father Stack and Deacon Neal.
Beezus: Where would we go?
Mrs. Q: We would go to temple at a synagogue.
Beezus: Mommy, Ola-Baby is Jewish.
Mrs. Q: Oh really?
Beezus: Yes, me AND Ola-Baby are Jewish.


Given my fondness for the Jewish people (Beezus and Ramona's real names are traditional Jewish names from the Old Testament) I was tickled at the influence that Ola-Baby's religious heritage has on Beezus !

Confidential to Aunt Sandy

I mistakenly told the girls that I was taking this picture for Aunt Sandy. Your god-daughter Ramona kept trying to push Beezus out of the picture, saying "It's for MY Aunt Sandy !"

I mistakenly told the girls that I was taking this picture for Aunt Sandy. Your god-daughter Ramona kept trying to push Beezus out of the picture, saying "It's for MY Aunt Sandy !"

Conversations with Ramona II

"Why did the dish run away with the spoon ?"

That kind of introspection at 2 years, 7 months ? Pretty darn cool.

The February Grid

Not sure exactly why I'm posting this, but I like to pretend that my readers love seeing the minutae of my daily life.

Seriously, if you ever feel overwhelmed or chaotic, it's worth the investment of time to make up a grid.

The grid expands to my closet

Oh, you thought I had done all I could do with the grid ? That although the grid started by covering a dinner, laundry, and household tasks schedule; and then expanded to also include what we need to do in the morning to be able to leave "on time"; and then expanded to include a lunch schedule so as to make the most efficient use of leftovers but now it can do EVEN MORE !!!

Yes! The grid now tells me what to wear in the morning. In this case, it's so simple I don't even have to write it down - it's a virtual grid in my head.

Let me back up a bit.

A couple months ago, Elaine gave me a book called Unclutter Your Life in One Week. She claims to be friends with the author, Erin Rooney Doland. I read this book at the same time as I was reading The Tightwad Gazette and reading them together was very thought provoking. I really started to think realistically about how being organized can save me money. For example, if my pantry and refrigerator are organized I will be better able to make use of leftovers, cutting down on the need to buy additional foods for lunch. If my sock drawer is organized and if I stick to my laundry schedule, I will see that I have AMPLE number of athletic socks for jazzercise and I will not need to buy more.

Erin's book has a step by step plan for organizing your life in one week. In most cases, it works. In others, it requires some tweaking. For example, she says that you can organize your closet on a Monday morning before work but that you have to have all your laundry and dry cleaning done. That took me two weeks to get all my laundry and dry cleaning done, so I had to plan ahead to get ready to organize. The reason she starts with your closet is because for many people that's where you start your day. Makes total sense to me.

It took me three naptimes to get through my closet, but the result was fantastic.

The first thing I did was do a quick purge. I'm on the regular call list for the thrift store and they do a pick up roughly every 6-8 weeks, so there wasn't much to purge. The next thing I did was pack away all my spring and summer clothes that were still in my closet. That gave me some breathing room on the racks.

Then I started sorting and here's the categories I came up with: dresses, skirts, pants, blouses that button up, blouses that pull over your head and don't button up, sweaters that can be worn by themselves without a shell underneath, cardigan sweaters that require a shell, knit shirts, and then my favorite, sweater sets. I tried to fold as many sweaters as I could, but some just had to be hung up. I occasionally dress up on my days at home, and I occasionally dress casual at work, so I decided not to differentiate between "SAHM/WAHM" clothes and "work day" clothes. Within each category, items were facing the same direction with hangers turned the same way (obviously). Further, they were arranged by color, with darks to the right and lights to the left. My mind just naturally categorizes by black, brown, navy, gray, red, pink, cream.

Once these were all categorized, then I started going through the misc. bins in my attic. I found it hard to part with clothes that are only 1-2 sizes too small. Since I have space in the attic, I kept those.

When I stood back and looked at my closet, clear themes started to emerge and I developed the following formula for my work days:

• Monday, work day: Fitted black pants, blouse, knee highs, dress shoes or dressy boots
• Tuesday, work day: Colored pants (fitted color pants go with blouses, less tailored pants or those with pleats go with sweater sets), shoes as appropriate
• Wednesday, SAHM day: corduroy pants or colored jeans, knit top or sweater, casual shoes
• Thursday, work day: Less tailored black pants and sweater set/sweater, dress shoes
• Friday, WAHM day: corduroy pants or colored jeans, knit top or sweater, casual shoes

This works for me because I don't care if I look great or am wearing the latest style. I just want to look decent and fairly pulled together. It also means that I am wearing more traditional dress clothes to work which leaves my casual clothes for my SAHM/WAHM days. It got so where I was wearing the exact.same.pair.of. (dirty) jeans. every single SAHM/WAHM day and I really wanted to look nicer. The IRL neighbor that I stalk never wears jeans and almost always wears long skirts and looks so nice and pulled together.

So there you have it. Yet another use for the grid. I'm going to post photos of my closet and February's grid on Wednesday during naptime.

Stay tuned !!!